Light to Dark

Today I decided to begin with the highlights and then work back to the darker tones – mainly to keep my brush light initially.

Seemed to work ok for me – although after a while I ended up moved back and forth between dark and light as I felt inclined, occasionally wiping off my brush with a cloth to make things less muddy.

Discover online that I’m meant to do the opposite – start with the darks and move to the lights. But this creates problems for me. I find it hard to add highlight colours on top of newly painted dark regions. I also like the way darks can be used to lend interest to area of thick highlight colour.

In any case, not much interest in doing anything that creates an illusion of depth. More trying to produce an image that has a diagrammatic aspect, that has a strange, uncertain relation to ordinary vision.

Rear Garden with Previous Painting

Subsequently noticed that I’d left a lot of paint on the palette.

Pressed the square of pine that I use as a palette several times on to a piece of paper.

Smeared the paint with a cloth doused in a bit of linseed oil.

Painted around the edge of the smeared central region with black.

Looks a truly bad abstract painting until I hold it up in front of a window – then it becomes like stained glass, with colours and blank portions showing up brightly.